Cisco Leads Evolution of Security for Today's Enterprise with Industry's First Secure Internet Gateway in the Cloud

SAN JOSE, Calif. — February 9, 2017 — Today Cisco launched the industry’s first secure internet gateway (SIG) in the cloud, Cisco® Umbrella, to address the new enterprise security challenges of today’s mobile, cloud-era.

The way people work is changing. An increasingly mobile workforce conducts business via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. The unprecedented growth of SaaS apps looks set to continue with Gartner predicting that SaaS usage will increase 70 percent by 2018. Because of this, more branch offices are connecting directly to the internet, bypassing protections offered by the corporate network. This new way of working, while great for productivity and flexibility, means that a large population of users aren’t protected by traditional network and web security controls offered on the corporate network. It also leaves organizations without visibility into threats targeting a significant portion of their enterprise.

Organizations are struggling to protect themselves in this new working paradigm. Most rely heavily on virtual private network (VPN) usage. But according to IDG, 82 percent of mobile workers admit that they don’t always use the VPN. Others depend on on-premise secure web gateway solutions and an array of associated agents, creating complexity and latency. Today’s challenges call for a new approach to security. Cisco believes that cloud protection is the new first line of defense for organizations, providing visibility and control right at the edge of the internet.

Cisco is driving this shift to cloud protection by pioneering a new product category, secure internet gateway (SIG), a new technology to secure this new working paradigm. A secure internet gateway (SIG) provides safe access to the internet anywhere users go, even when they are off the VPN. A SIG acts as a secure onramp to the internet and provides the first line of visibility and defense regardless of where users are located or to what they’re trying to connect.

Cisco Umbrella, a secure internet gateway, is a cloud-delivered security platform that provides this first line of defense to protect employees both on and off the corporate network. Umbrella stops current and emergent threats over all ports and protocols for the most comprehensive coverage. It blocks access to malicious domains, URLs, IPs, and files before a connection is ever established or a file downloaded. With most threats targeting the endpoint, it’s critical to cover all ports and protocols to provide a safety net that covers 100 percent of traffic. Umbrella’s powerful, effective security does not require the typical operational complexity. By performing everything in the cloud, there is no hardware to install, and no software to manually update. Organizations can provide protection for all devices in minutes and leverage their existing Cisco investments — including AnyConnect® client, Integrated Services Router 4K Series, and wireless LAN controllers— to easily point Internet traffic to Umbrella whether on or off the corporate network.

Cisco Umbrella delivers:

Visibility and protection everywhere: Umbrella provides the visibility needed to protect Internet access across all devices on a network, all office locations, and roaming users. By combining Umbrella with Cisco Cloudlock’s Cloud Access Security Broker technology, Cisco can now enable organizations to identify which SaaS apps are being used and enforce policies to block risky or inappropriate apps.
Intelligence to stop attacks before they launch: Umbrella resolves over 100 billion internet requests every day and correlates this live data with over 11 billion historical events. This is analyzed to identify patterns, detect anomalies, and create models to automatically uncover attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat.
Broadest coverage for malicious destinations and files: Umbrella leverages powerful tools from across Cisco Security to obtain the most complete view to identify and stop threats earlier. This includes
- Machine learning models to uncover known and emergent threats, blocking connections to malicious destinations at the DNS and IP layers.
- Cisco Talos threat intelligence to block malicious URLs at the HTTP/S layer.
- Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) to detect malicious files and block them in the cloud
An open platform for easy integration: Umbrella can integrate with existing systems, including security appliances, intelligence platforms or feeds, and custom, in-house tools which enables users to extend protection for devices and locations beyond the perimeter.
Discovery and control for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps: Umbrella, together with Cloudlock, enables organizations to discover and control sensitive data in SaaS apps on and off-network.
Reliable and fast connectivity for a great user experience: Customers don’t experience broken or slow connections when they use Umbrella. Umbrella uses Anycast routing — every data center announces the same IP address so that requests are transparently sent to the fastest available with automated failover to maintain 100 percent uptime. This is security that won’t slow down users.

“The vast majority of our people, in order to be effective for our clients, do not work from one single location. They work from home, coffee shops, client sites, hotels and airports and irrespective of where they work from, we need to protect their workstations,” said Joseph Paradi, senior director, ITS enterprise services, Avanade. “Traditional solutions like firewalls or web proxies don’t meet the needs of our mobile workforce and we need to protect our users from malware they could receive in any location. Partnering with Cisco Security allows us to securely enable a digital workplace.”

Supporting Quotes

“Keeping our clients’ data secure is absolutely critical to Spencer Stuart. With cutting edge analytics, the addition of file inspection with top tier advanced malware engines and a constant stream of innovation, we’re excited to see the security delivered by Cisco Umbrella. The Umbrella dashboard provides a one stop shop for investigating threats and helps me to demonstrate that value to firm management.” – Matthew Gibson, network security engineer, Spencer Stuart

“Mobility has changed the enterprise network. The cloud has changed applications – their development and delivery – and how we think about, access and store data. Traditional security tools that require employees to work from an office, log in to the corporate network, and use corporate-managed devices or corporate-owned applications are no longer sufficient. Our secure internet gateway, Cisco Umbrella, can protect today’s enterprise and beyond as mobility increases and new cloud services are adopted. It provides the most comprehensive visibility and enforcement for internet traffic, and together with Cloudlock, Cisco’s Cloud Access Security Broker, it enables discovery and control for SaaS apps, both on and off the corporate network.” – David Ulevitch, Vice President, General Manager, Security Business Group, Cisco Systems

Supporting Resources

Blog: Introducing Cisco Umbrella, the industry’s first Secure Internet Gateway in the cloud